


To Hold, To Relish, To Grow

by kylee15404



Category: K-pop, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Dreams vs. Reality, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Friendship is Magic, Gen, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Inspired by Life Goes On (BTS), Inspired by Spring Day (BTS), Kim Taehyung | V is a Ray of Sunshine, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Park Jimin is Trying His Best (BTS), Post-High School, Power Dynamics, Sad with a Happy Ending, Suicide Attempt, Talking To Dead People, Trains, creepy fantasy stuff but harmless, high school field trip gone wrong, please believe the last tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28229628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kylee15404/pseuds/kylee15404
Summary: After a school field trip claims the lives of friends and families, Taehyung delves deep into his dreams pursuing ghosts.
Relationships: Jeon Jungkook/Min Yoongi | Suga, Jeon Jungkook/Park Jimin, Jung Hoseok | J-Hope/Kim Taehyung | V, Kim Taehyung | V/Park Jimin
Kudos: 7





	1. Catching A Ray

**Author's Note:**

> So there's been lots of stuff going on in the news, 2020 stuff (2020 sucks, btw) and people are just sad. Just rain and empty streets and blue everywhere. I was listening to Spring Day and there was like this soft little flower in my heart, just this urge for this feeling to spread, and then Life Goes On comes in and i HAVE to let it bloom while the fire's lit.
> 
> Spring Day was inspired by a falling leaf in a park but it is ALSO, about the tragic Sewol Ferry Incident in South Korea. So sensitive stuff like death, abuse of power, and lots of the bitter aftertaste of being in the face of death. Some of them not so much, but it's there (referenced to).
> 
> The first chapter is purely Taehyung's POV, which gets a little messed up sometimes between realities and timestamps. Warning, I guess. It takes place in the year 2018, and they were like eighteen? Basically high school seniors back in 2014 during the flashbacks. Don't get carried away by all that sadness, cause it always steers that way. Ends happily though.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taehyung is wary of things in the dark.

Taehyung pictures a film.

From all the way front, the screen blares full in his face. Desiccated eyes and welding flesh reeling back by a black ribbon, and the guy in front of him keeps slamming back into his seat. Probably pissed at Taehyung’s bare feet on his back, and all the disconcerted mumbling which comes with way too chilly AC and shitty CGI. Zombies catapult into glass, gobble crowbars from the skeleton ranks of dilapidated buildings. Sound of crunching popcorn grates at his nerves, distracting.

Walls mildly hum, like wailing nightingales, raven when Taehyung turns back to look.

“Don’t,” Hoseok whispers. “The more you look the faster it ends. Develops a sort of consciousness, you see.” There are little nail-shaped petals on Taehyung’s skin, tender and flowering where light touches. A zombie rips open a civilian’s throat and hauls her into a roadside stall, crashing, and Taehyung jolts, spills a slurp of coke. Hoseok’s fingers anchor in deeper.

 _Not working_ , Taehyung thinks, home screen flicking on and off, a band of shine above his eyebrow. When he thinks about the _time_ , ticking hands constant, leaping over smiles, stretching malleable in the darkness, he feels like a tree stump. A piece of uneven ground. Something slithers in the corner, something hiding in those walls; something breathes. He douses two chicken nuggets and thinks hastily, of a noisy polystyrene beanbag by the gate, hall numbers lighting, him and Jimin balancing all the mega-sizes of everything on the menu and screaming maniacally through crowds, Jungkook clipped between, blue screens in his eyes, smile small.

Or: Jimin in the bathroom. Taehyung with all the drinks and popcorn, Jungkook staring at him silently as if expecting something, some twitch or some question. Taehyung staring back blankly, offered a fishball. The narrow gap between now and their last meeting caved to a four-foot pool; but rich history sort of puts a bullet through time. Fills every hole, Taehyung thinks.

Or: at the vast mall entrance, rain spraying, Jimin devouring Jungkook in a massive koala hug, Jungkook dwarf-looking in his nylon raincoat, studying Taehyung briefly, falling into him hesitantly.

A popcorn bag tears open, and between a zombie’s head nests of slimy caterpillars wriggle. There’s a spider-web cracking the corner screen. Taehyung watches green spilling from the exit, frowning as it treads smoothly over vague faces.

His sleeve rattles when Hoseok says, “Tae. Focus.” His voice is reedy, muffled as if the space between them spans galaxies.

The chair shivers, walls pulsate—when he turns, idly still in flashing darkness. Taehyung shifts back in his seat, securing, a sharp discomfort in his stomach windmilling.

It’s Jungkook’s birthday. 

Taehyung stuffs himself with a handful of popcorn.

Spider-webs split, hairy, reach out like hands over the screen. Taehyung becomes frighteningly still, breath lodged in his chest. Bustling around him: Hoseok’s counted breaths, Jimin raking the bag of popcorn Jungkook tore in two, Jungkook on the edge of his seat, cinematic lights catching rubies in his eyes.

One moment the world’s swallowed in bloody teeth and rotten limbs and the next it’s back to normal.

Taehyung’s insides stick together in dizzying sweetness.

If without his bomber jacket and heavy shoes both he and Hoseok can get to the door and wait out the whole movie, but he’ll also have to explain to Jungkook why he can’t _this once. Just this once_ , Jungkook said, at the popcorn stand, at the parking lot, and last month, when they first asked about his birthday. Two people—guards, might be cinema staff—are perched on either side of the exit, eyes flicking and contracting to seeds when Taehyung moves out of his seat.

Then still as water.

It’s Jungkook’s birthday, and Taehyung shouldn’t ruin this for him.

A guard’s face is half out of the darkness, a Cheshire cat smiling through smoke. _Stay put_ , the smile seems to say. _Stay there_. The exit melts into nothingness.

“I found it, I found the place—” Hoseok is saying, but blurs into the tank of murk. Taehyung can feel it in his hair, on his chin, plugging his ears, the cold, sound-cancelling _black._

Taehyung shrinks next to Hoseok. Grips onto every fold of his shirt, every sliver of existence. Harsh, grainy audio prickles, thorny. Something about this _box_ , bubbling with strangers, every nook and cranny and dent smoothed into one misshaped monster. Something about the encompassing, enrapturing screen, the preciousness of familiarity. Hoseok is a lever on reality.

A coin-sized light in the box of secrets, of unknown creatures.

Dances through his grip, lightweight.

He has to fight the urge to scream, to tell Hoseok _he’s here_ , _he’s listening._ And with every press of silence Taehyung clasps harder. He’s trembling trying to hold on, just feeling and believing.

Something drips on the back of Taehyung’s neck. A tangible chill, holding him still. _Now, now,_ he’s thinking, _now, now, now_. But his body locks against the cold, his jaw concrete, his voice dried to ash. Hoseok’s fingers shift from under Taehyung’s, slippery umbra retreating into the dark.

Crevices between seats glow from a lantern festival scene, and the black leaps back into the walls, still again.

Jungkook grumbles. “This sucks,” he says. Heads whip back, shushing. “We can bail and make it to Sihwaho Lake before sunset.”

Jimin’s voice is smooth. “Are you sure?”

Jungkook crouches over and taps the back of Taehyung’s palm, “Always wanted to catch it on film, right?”

“Sunset?” he echoes quietly, gripping the armrests. He hears himself—raspy, scraped out by clawed hands. Taehyung has a fifty-page portfolio of orange streaks and glistening grounds lying somewhere in Jimin’s basement. _Can’t get enough of it, huh_ , Jungkook said, slow paces muted in the soft wood. The glow from the lamp smeared, his eyes behind turning pages like crescents.

Lanterns set off into a lake, showering half of Jungkook with artificial kindling. “Never been there together.”

Taehyung rubs his thumbs into the collective pressure in his skull.

He remembers the end to this movie. He remembers being curled into his seat and staring, his drink flat pools and moistened stems of carpet. Crackling flames, hulking armies of the undead bending over, wilting, reducing to ash. The credits rolling. Jimin tapping his shoulder, muttering. They hadn’t left.

Spider-webs loom with shadow, fingers like skinny twigs; sound like ice breaking. Taehyung reaches into the void and skates over Hoseok’s vacant seat. Cold, not a trace of body warmth. He folds his knuckles to his lips, bone-white, old wounds tearing open. ‘ _Can_ we leave?’

But Jungkook’s not there.

Bitterness timidly swells, a blooming flower in his chest.

At some point the movie stopped, turned black. Taehyung feels like he’s trapped in outer space. Floating through time, a lonely planet without a moon. Certain nights appear so—starless nights, the earth sole with life. When the house was desolate, when dead leaves rustled across the pavement and Taehyung sat there, flashlight to the sky. Wondering if it broke through the clouds, if there were eyes peering, thinking _sad, sad boy_. Now they probably think, _boy, only a boy_.

And then a light comes on, heavy bursts of sun, and the room disperses into a hall.

He snaps to the exit, chilly air licking the side of his neck. A turning fan, humming. Silver twines cluster across the dark wood borders of paintings. Spiders peek from behind, trail close as if intrigued. He peeks through a hole in a wall, squeaking with mice. A ceiling panel points sadly to the floor, one edge crushed and swallowed in mites.

A sign says _Caricatures_ in bold. The first time Taehyung had been here there was an auction—bladed voices, grimy sandpaper air and sweaty bodies colliding everywhere, and he tried to master a painting. Far from the featured section. Somewhere quiet. He figured since pictures weren’t allowed he could settle with shoddy remakes. 

Closest to him, one of the pictures: a zombie. It watches him, egg-white eyes, trapped forever in a rectangular frame. Another: school balcony and rows of soggy-looking potted plants, overlooking a grim city skyline. Further below: misty and unclear. He can’t remember the paintings. Only the floral carvings and smooth bark of frames. He plucks those from the wall, one, then two, breathing into it warm, with his sleeves squeaking them clean.

Blurred, still.

It’s everywhere—every turn, the hall fades into a waking dense light, beyond reach, unperceivable.

Taehyung thinks the ground rocks under his feet. Like warning of a stampede.

Maybe that’s where he is.

“Careful,” Jimin says, subtly turning over the cover page—two guards, turned to a window, sunlight diamond white on their faces. Veils of smoke curling on their shoulders like tongues.

Taehyung goes back to the page, impatient. “I’ve been stuck on the same place for fifteen minutes.”

“Should’ve just brought a camera. We can both fit the window, I bet—one click and we’d split.”

“I’m trying my best. Don’t rush me.” Taehyung fills in the shadows. Gives it shape, haughty expression, cheekbone contour to telephone poles, plump lips to chubby white puffs.

Before this page it was a beach: soft pink sand into rising waves, splashing with sunset, graffiti skies over mirror planes stretching to the end of the world. Now he’s drawing a carousel. Spotted with rust, hinges that creak and groan. Bucket-shaped seats of butterfly-blue and aged bronze which spin good luck. 

A grandfather clock ticks. Faceless figures bluster past, voices crackle and tear, the air slick honey clinging to his skin. He crouches over his notebook, thinking.

He can’t recall the paintings.

A bell chimes, and Taehyung draws plain guesses, draws till the next chime of the clock. The ground moves subtly, tiles hissing apart. Water is running outside. A busted pipe, maybe.

“Taehyung-ah,” Jimin says tenderly, fingers creeping the paper edges. Taehyung already knows what he’s going to say: _Jungkook’s birthday isn’t till in three months_ , he’ll say, slowly lowering the book. _We’ll come next time._

Taehyung draws mounds of seashells, sandcastles picked apart by crows, scraping so hard into the page that there’s a rainbow of crushed lead, that the carousel is engraved into four following pages. He won’t _wait_. Waiting means being first to the finish line and withdrawing a step, means a stolen shopping cart, it means making room for the zombies to catch up.

He starts with an ocean and a floating house on a new page, doodling cat-scratches for water waves, his black fingers and palms filling night skies. Jimin lowers his things and leans into the wall, resigned. Hands Taehyung tissues to wipe himself. Then it’s four pages later when he starts again, all _I’m hungry_ , and Taehyung reluctantly progresses onto a next painting, powdered tracks and smoking windows and the world in white. He’d been retracing the bends and creases of the same carousel into all four moulds.

He’s already done this, too. Trains spinning into snow, barren trees and lofty grey domes.

He preps a new page and sharpened pencil anyway.

The remakes are insignificant titbits of a very elaborate plan: in Jungkook’s new home there’s an attic, well-lit with old lamps, cosily wrapped in Jungkook’s baby blankets his mom won’t dispose of. Taehyung thought he’d make a gallery out of it; hand-drawn places they’ve been to, Polaroid group shots, a miniature set-up of the bonfire camp outside Seokjin’s house in Gwacheon, fairy lights, paper clips, dry pockets. Calls it the Hall of Remembrance. Or Nauseating Nostalgia. He’s working on it.

The bags of Taehyung’s socks sag on his ankles. Jimin kicks at a jutting tile.

The clock chimes. Overlapping voices had deflated, paintings gift-wrapped and shipped, and Jimin ordered a Grab: _it can wait_ , Taehyung thought, half-sketches and unfulfilled spaces pinned to his fingers. _It can wait_ , to the following morning, signing for the school field trip, Jungkook complaining about a lost weekend, Namjoon going on about a post-pubescent existential crisis or discovering identity with Mother Nature, Yoongi weighing the pros and cons of boarding a ferry with so few supervisors and so many fucking monkeys.

The clock chimes, and Taehyung stamps the tile edge back into place.

He sneakily takes pictures of the complicated ones with the advanced brush-stroke techniques—he can do those at home. Even on his phone the paintings are obscure films of light, smudged like lead.

A black-capped man removes one of the paintings. The wall is dusty and chapped, withered like an old man’s hair; spiders crawl out of corners left and right making a home of lonely paintings.

Waiting means giving way for the spiders.

His hands are smoked. He draws the beach, again, carelessly, not even looking at the page. Simply listening; picking apart the crowds, searching. Smoke printed into cement breaks at certain faces. Maybe he’d been searching that day too.

Jimin pinches the side of Taehyung’s stomach, eager, but Taehyung doesn’t relent—he pins himself to a spot, cross-legged, pencil scratching, waiting. “He’s being stubborn,” Jimin sighs.

“We can check out the lake while he’s at it.”

Taehyung drops his pencil. Hoseok.

“It’s pretty there,” Hoseok goes on, “Said to be an ancient tool of demigods who sprung from mortal mothers. Haunted by angels and near-death escorts. Sometimes people go there, for a peace of mind. One last look at a parent, a friend.” Taehyung hears the words swim above the crowd, intently to his ears. “Some people go there so they can leave the world together.”

He feels all warm and fuzzy inside. Wine-suffused, almost. He doesn’t want to sober.

A light down the hall flickers.

Taehyung pulls his notebook into his lap, shuts it, no longer of purpose. Saying softly, “It’s no use. Dreams fade first, hyung. I don’t want to wake up.”

“Shh. You need to be awake for this one,” Hoseok whispers. “Take the car to Sihwaho. Have Jimin take you.”

“They’ll be there. The guards.”

No reply.

Around him: a mass lump of people, sticking and unsticking like mould in corners, streets of sunlight and no Hoseok. Taehyung rushes forward. Lights above his head dim, spiders crawl into piles. Shoulders bouldering and Hoseok’s distant mellow chitters drilling through his muscles, nothing in his mind but _wait, wait, wait_ ; grasps between spaces, pushes so hard, so far to keep Hoseok within reach. _Overstepping_ so far that the crowd becomes thunderous, that everything in the world turns solid against him and he has to fight to move.

Spiders are on his legs. Inching up, slowly, entangling with folds of his pants. Spreading like ink. 

“HYUNG!” His voice tickles a dust bunny.

He should’ve listened to Hoseok. Should’ve stuck to _safe_ , behind barriers of naked walls and solid tiles, Hoseok’s voice in the distance ringing _permanence_. Should’ve silently mapped every beat. Every magical thread unspooling between both worlds, connecting. He thinks he’s forced a wound into the earth’s orbit, broken a couple of universal laws, in one breath, in those few conscious words.

Spiders squeal in his ears. He bats them off. They eat out the lights, squirm across his skin sharp and cold. Taehyung can make out high-whiny voices saying _enough. Go back_. An entire wave of them.

Taehyung saw this in a comic, once. Fields of locusts hindering brave mountain-climbers. A thick swarm of tiny legs prickling, scouring floors and climbing out of pipes, humanly voices gushing through his body. Punishment. He rakes his nails across his face. Squeaking little things in his eyes and bitter in his mouth, wet like a burst pen.

Hoseok told him once, in a dream, on a porch, tides rising to shore. _Don’t fight them. Guardians have rules to follow._ Taehyung gazed to the moon, a round disc, pouring on them. One moment tinkling silver, Hoseok’s smile vast and ethereal, one moment gone, all of it. Swept under a guiding light.

The bristling slows into a gentle wave, a clean night. He puts his hand to his face, to a cool cheek. Pulls back and imagines it there, steadily treading. No more spiders, gallery and stomping congregations and a cautious Hoseok, long gone.

When the ship sank, it felt like this. Numbing space. The whole thing had been as quiet, then. Packed with humanly squeaks then slowed to silence. _Hyung_ rings persistently, faint and mocking. As soon as he spoke, he should’ve known he’d end here, this pit devoid of reach.

Darkness.

All he does is wade through, waiting—merely wait, as always.

Taehyung breathes in, feels the air fill him up. Peppermint evades like white on black, slight but there. Stroking into mid-air, he hears it singing distantly, a jingling hum. The cold flutters.

He squints into the invisible shape of his open palm.

He’s never been here long enough to realize: darkness has form. A house, maybe, sealed to the crack. Silk smooth and burning in negative temperatures, taking him places without him moving. Every touch familiar. Everywhere welcoming. Here, his thoughts flow. It’s strange. This place, he thinks, extracts every shred of emptiness that comes from Hoseok’s absence, like vacuum collecting dirt, bagging it elsewhere. And now he’s here, in the hole left behind.

He propels towards the humming.

Reaches out to it. Feels something lukewarm.

Jimin hands him a steaming mug. Taehyung takes it unsteadily, drooping eyes still drowsy, mind like an oiled switch stuck between up and down.

“It’s hot,” Jimin warns, heading out the door.

Taehyung groans into his palms, an ache in his bones, as if shaken like coins in a jar. Blades of light float above his arms, the palpable hard oak of his desk gravitating him back to earth. Grounding him. He feels half-dead.

His notebook is opened, a page crushed to pines under his arm. Darkened with drool. He blots it with tissue, salvaging the remaining pages. Then he grabs the pencil and writes: _I prepared something for Jungkook’s birthday. I forgot how it went._ He sits back, the chair whimpers. Scratches that last part. _He hates the sentimental mush, and as far as aesthetics go, a Polaroid and sketch gallery really marks the eyes. Preparations as long as three months._

He goes back a page. Draws an amusement park. Slides snaking ten metres, leaves scattering like rain into July wind. Carousels revolving planets. Behind it, blankets of sand, dusk waning into a flat line. They’d been there, all seven of them starfish under the sun, sand in their hair, waves tickling their toes drawing forth and pulling back as if the world was breathing. Taehyung carving a random symbol into a tree, determined to make their mark. An extra-terrestrial seven sided shape, one cut for each. Hoseok and Jungkook running into the water, Yoongi yelling about two teenagers who’d been stung by beach-jellyfish on the news. Watching dusk and dawn bake fire-hot magenta, in and out between solid charcoal.

He flips through yellow pages, cheeks spreading with a smile. 

Somewhere in the back of his head the place had been stashed like an old t-shirt, hidden beneath piles of other dim memories. At some point maybe it’d rot—Jimin told him there was a time when Taehyung didn’t recognize the place, even from his binders. Even after minutes of contemplation, staring at those photos questioning those smiles and those people.

He finds the carousel again, three pages behind. Pencil light and rubbed. Rakes his fingers through his hair, head spinning with air, headache beating with moths.

He feels like he’s stranded on some boat in the middle of the sea, sometimes up, sometimes down. Sometimes drowned in a wipe of blank, sometimes above and breathing and full.

Picking a pen, he engraves today’s carousel in ink. Intent on having it fixed like a tattoo.

There’s not yet an entry on Jungkook’s present; he continues writing, _went to new gallery openings for inspiration. Like themes, colour arrangements, architectural flow of still-picture storytelling. The hyungs helped out. Decorated Jungkook’s attic right under his nose. Jungkook never went up there. I thought of giving him reason to._

Bonfire. Something about a bonfire. He splits the page with a marker.

_We set a camp outside Seokjin hyung’s place. Had marshmallows all evening. Namjoon hyung burnt about half._

He watches steam rise, genie-tailed from his mug. The hairy tip of his pen dissolves a deep crater to the next page. Something else; so much more. He stares at the leather cover, pages wriggling, initials sewn in gold. Inside, ink spread apart in scrambles of sentences, strips of loose, disconnected thoughts, barely any sense in it. Reminders of the pettiest, most insignificant things like his two-string violin Jimin won’t fix, the muddy-grass smell of the ocean, the sound of boiling engines: grating; every little thing sprung into memory. Just the words of a floating man.

In the kitchen, a steel pot is clattering at full heat. Peppermint tea gurgles, high-key. A wooden ladle stirs into singing metal. Taehyung listens to it, pencil twirling between his fingers, pacing his breath, the sound swelling behind closed eyelids. Matches it with his rhythm.

He adds another section to the page: _in the end, we went to the movies. Zombie shit. Didn’t have fun._

He thinks of new ink, put together about a crusty old past. Thinks maybe he should put it to better use. Present becomes past, and twenty-seconds from now Taehyung may only remember _his_ present. Twenty-years from now Taehyung might dwindle in this same spot, wringing ink over dim shreds, painstakingly collecting flakes of the past.

He sips from his mug.

On a new page, removing the plastic covers of a new pen he starts: _2018.03.14. Snow again_. He slips, the _g_ loses its tail to vague mizzle; he’s trembling. So many things he wants to safe-keep in ink, so many aching black holes and foreboding tell-tales he wants to remember, in case one day his life goes so far south and he doesn’t even _understand_. In case he wants to circle back, to unearth the turning point of it all.

_Snow again. New Year lanterns still out on the swing. Burning sluggish and red. Like sunset. A slow, painful build to the next slow. Haven’t talked with Jimin yet. Not talk, talk. Sometimes he’s busy, or unwilling._

_Maybe we’ve already talked._

_Snow for a while, now. People are talking. Panic was couple years back, in May. Now they’re waiting. Winter in summer is a bad omen, endless winter foreboding. End of the world is days away: sprayed all over cardboard. So annoying._

_Don’t think anyone has anything better to do. They hold up signs from porch to porch. Screaming. End, end, end, they keep saying._

A buck-toothed emoji, forehead clawed with triple-a battery thick wrinkles. On a side note: _Jimin’s already bought electrical protection against the climbers._

Three full paragraphs, no blanks. Today is one of those rare days.

Jimin is at the door. Rows of snow globes swim with bright koi fishes across his face. He might’ve been standing there for a minute. “Ready?” he chimes, cheerful. Layers of spongy collars and a fuzzy beanie hide him to the cheek, little white fishes finding between gaps and kissing his eyes hazel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm trying out this thing where I listen to my English teacher and show don't tell, and it's getting pretty doubtful for me if it's a clear pertinent kind of show and not like There Will Be Blood where everything's layers into the surface, like into the earth's core deep: just confusing.
> 
> Idk quarantine has given me lots of time to think, and this fic reflects a lot of that in the later chapters. 
> 
> I'm curious to know what you think ^^ Open to criticism always, just bash at me. Being 16 also means taking shit and learning :3


	2. Living The Seconds

Today marks _shopping_ on Taehyung’s calendar. Spots of shadow sink weightlessly outside, banks of white sprinkled over yesterday’s melted. His shoes are wet ten steps from the fence, and both of them turn back for a change of socks before taking the car to Myeongdong. Taehyung presses his forehead against the glass. His exhale is a pear-shaped frost, hanging above people’s heads like a happy cloud. Jimin returns amply after fetching a new snow globe, from underneath plastic flashing a full spectrum of colour, and Taehyung gets off spotting two mannequins across the street, belts dancing with disco bells and paper-stuffed ornaments and cottony pouches. Jimin’s trailing footsteps nimbly scuttle across the iced road.

Bells chirp, a spring of warmth clambers Taehyung’s neck. From behind exhibiting glass, the pouch is all frizzy threads and lightning zip. The kind of thing that clings to Hoseok’s waist day in day out, market or runway. Taehyung can almost hear Hoseok’s gleeful laugh, tickling. While Jimin slots into the queue, Taehyung steps out into the parted slosh, peering into glass. Even without the acorn pouch the outfit still pops, a pouch-matching furry-stripe cardigan, and skinny denim above snow-thick soles. Hoseok grins at him. Sniffs into his sleeves, red curls catching on his cheeks. Dusting his jeans, his eyebrows raise in pleasant surprise.

 _Pretty good_ , he’s saying, glass-muted.

Pretty good, yeah. Pretty much Hoseok.

Taehyung calls the shopkeeper. Jimin trudges back into the line. It’s sprouted six heads to the near-entrance, crisp wind gnawing at Taehyung’s nape. He takes the shopping bag off Jimin with a pleading smile, acorn bag snuffling inside. Across it, a tape says, _SOLD._

Jimin doesn’t say much. In his common absence Taehyung’s raking bugs out the basement, running itchy bristles over cracks and peeling walls, and fingers bruised purple, blisters crossing lips, he runs to Jimin’s festering headlights all starry smiles in twinkling night. _Good day_? Taehyung would ask, dried paint on his jaw curled back into petals, excitably prancing around new walls or shiny furniture. Jimin would go on about _how amazing the house looks_ , even with hours of work weighing on his shoulders. Even after dinner, flat out with limbs splayed on the couch, staring solely at that new wall, he’d smile into the crook of Taehyung’s neck whispering: _you did amazing._

_Click._

A curve of trees encompasses a frozen lake, littlest remnants of irises or tulips or lilies flushed out by the same blow that had taken out the park. Shoeprints wrinkled and flat sink, heaps of stray veiny branches dip into bubbling creeks.

_Click._

Whipped by a cry of wind, a wave of snow rises, aurora-bent and cascading. Taehyung squints into his camera, tongue wetting the corner of his lips, a lazy breath screening sagging cables of bobbing pigeons. Snivelling dogs skid across hills. Fat snowmen and children dance in a circle. Soothing. Sort of cultish.

_Click._

Jimin takes his hand. He seems to feel it too. The pulse of warmth beneath flesh-thick ice, swimming patiently.

Tyres spin into muddy frost. Their boots squelch, every layer of sock catching onto the cold. Taehyung fastens himself onto Jimin the whole drive home, refusing to budge even at green lights on highways and shrieking trucks. Today is one of those rare days: lakes streaming, ice breaking, water bottles filling to the brim. Everything old and worn and accustomed to, every passing road like tracing wrinkles along his palms, familiar.

Taehyung wants to hold on to it, every magical drip.

There’s a new ant infestation in the dark corner of Jimin’s basement. 

“Tell me again, what we did for Jungkook’s birthday,” Taehyung says, thumbing the spray can. These things spring off rocks and disappear into the walls, start retreating into tricky little corners where the cans don’t fit. Jimin fetches backup from the storeroom. A pungent smoke-cloud whistles out, insects flee, cardigans and scarves scramble down fragile slopes, little frames of life in them stirred by the waking smell. A lingering flurry seeks into the living room, curious.

“This year’s?” Jimin fans a newspaper. “Is it for your diary?”

“Not a diary,” he mutters. His hands still over the broom. Tunnels in the walls impale with spears of sun, blackish-orange, juvenile. “There was this documentary, about how the most precious memories surface from nowhere, just,” he snaps his fingers, “Pop up. And they had a brain study, x-rays into the brain cells, when it’s just _lost_. Gone. The guy tries recalling, tries picking at everything leading to it, and the memory isn’t the same. Tampered, kind of, inserted with a bunch of stuff his current self has fixed, stuff he’s embarrassed of, or stuff he wish happened. It’s so—it’s interesting.”

Jimin picks a fallen cardigan and shoulder bag and pats them into the bundle. Sweetness blooms on his face. “It is interesting. We watched a movie. Horror. We wanted to go with something Jungkook would like, some cheap b-grade mid-apocalypse crap. You know. To cheer him up.”

Taehyung shakes his head. “Always thought he acted tough, loving this stuff. Then?”

“And then he took a call and left mid-way. We stayed to the end, thinking he had a bad tummy ache. Thinking he’d come back.” He hugs his knees, growing pocket-sized. “Must’ve been too hard, being with us. Just us.”

“And, my present?” Taehyung gulps, picking at a splinter. “The gallery in Jungkook’s attic. I finished it?”

“You did. But he made us take it down.”

“Everything?”

“Everything. He was going to lock the basement for good, and didn’t want it all collecting mites.” A measly shadow pops like a wart, swollen. Twilight-spears thin to needles. Jimin looks far, far past the clothes, through the walls, to a packed cinema, to a swinging door and an empty seat. Far, far gone. “Ah, Jungkook, he—he overthinks sometimes. And nothing like Namjoon does.”

“Nothing like you do.”

Jimin’s face is grim. “He just overthinks his _emotions_ and—and _insecurities_ and then—shuts off. Not a word, nothing.”

“Used to spice rackets from the hyungs,” Taehyung says, fondly. “Remember Mr Lee’s gym class? Fifteen weeks at the top of the scoreboard, and Jungkook got scholarship deals and after-school training. Missed him at recess. Missed him in evenings till the next school day. Just sort of…peeled away.”

“It’s a slow, unknowing process,” Jimin says. “But he took the full blame, took it personal—every holiday we had without him. Almost surprising when I thought about it. How much he’d grown apart from us. The ease of it.”

Taehyung shudders. “Freaked me out. I showed at his house. Even then he told me to go home. Go home, sleep. Woke his parents at dead midnight, got beaten with a broom until they turned the light on. It was traumatic.”

Jimin’s chin is snuggled into his knees. “Yeah? Must’ve been.” Taehyung expects him to laugh, or at least brighten. Jimin pats a dusty hand on a grey cotton patch and takes the end of Taehyung’s broom broodingly, a heavy cloud snaking electric.

He doesn’t think he’s told Jimin. In Jungkook’s house, Taehyung in the living room, Jungkook’s father’s fist on the switch, Jungkook halfway down the stairs, oversized pyjamas slumped too big over his shoulder. Eyes wide at the needle-patterns of a broomstick printed on Taehyung’s arms. _Didn’t see you today,_ Taehyung told him, casually. _Didn’t even give us a chance to ask if—if you wanted to join us. For lunch, or—or stuff._ Jungkook took Taehyung outside, and Taehyung heard a couple of apologies in the back, between a crack in the door. Taehyung went on, desperate to say the words once, _just cause we’re making way for you to chase your dreams doesn’t mean we can’t be in the picture, Kook, or don’t want to be. God, of course we do._ A lump in Jungkook’s throat as he said, _tomorrow, hyung. You should sleep._ A star-like sparkle in his eyes. Touched, almost.

“Point is, lot goes on in his head, but it’ll sort out over time. He has his own pace.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Sometimes, sleepless nights or lethargic, nothing-from-work weekends, Taehyung finds Jimin upstairs, flat against the bed, with a book cropped up from fields of memoirs and autobiographies and creative essays wandering human nature, multitudes of perspectives on philosophy and subjective justifications to the modern system. Taehyung saw Namjoon like that a lot, back when he was still in Seoul and they shared that pocked-walls apartment near school grounds. Always deeply contemplating, always tiptoeing on a fine line between religious epiphany and mute depression.

Jimin’s always thinking of _someone_. Using them as a drive to wonder.

Taehyung thinks it’s one of the fine pages of Jimin: his need to understand, to _try_.

A crackling silence. Jimin buries his face in his palms.

“No one really deals with this stuff. Barely a soul who doesn’t try to worsen things with _what-ifs_. I wish he’d stop wallowing. Wish he’d use this regret, this _anger_ and _do_ something. But what can I say? A stubborn man forfeits reason. After his birthday I figured he needed space, and he’d contact me once he’s surmounted this…this grudge. Once he takes a look around and sees _us_. Still here.”

“Stubborn man,” Taehyung repeats, loosely, giddily. “Yoongi said that a lot, about Jungkook. _A fucking bull_.” He watches Jimin, every twitch in his shoulder. “I still think about it too, I still wonder all the what-ifs—we _can’t_ say much, and it’s fine. We only drift so far, seven of us.”

Jimin peers up at him. Taehyung grins. He seems to have struck a chord somewhere, because Jimin’s on his feet, a tacit thankfulness in his grip around Taehyung’s shoulders.

He’s put Jimin’s basement to good use.

Before this it was deserted, uncared for: bland dune bricks and uneven cement, netted vents wheezing through hairy teeth, wriggling bugs greeting at every turn. Taehyung comes here often, to think, to amend wounded nights and twisting sleep. When his heart’s in his throat, suffocating, when words tumble furious and nonsensical and tear into paper. When the camera flashes into white everywhere, left, right, like he’s trapped in a hallway of doors leading nowhere.

There’re traces of it even throughout the day, some deliberate and some natural—traces, like a footprint, a memory. Traces of his long days and frisky fingers and bright resolve to Jimin’s smile after work. Then there’s also the clothes; most of them Hoseok had worn: PC neon-sign traffic vest he thought had an air of authority, a respectful kind of glow, round Harry Potter shades and a winter wool sweater with stubby, muscular arms and a protruding belly. All of it rolled together like snow, pat to a pyramid.

He adds today’s clothes while Jimin orders takeout, and it breaks into highest height: the ceiling concaves at the force of the peak, blunt, air punched out of a flattened acorn pouch.

Metallic nets barring the window exudes a heavy, yearning sigh.

People call it our second skin; say remnants of a person still inhabit their clothes. Maybe Taehyung’s mad. A wishing stone grants, a mountain trail guides, brings lost ants to the light. Brings them up, higher. One day Taehyung’s going to clear out the living room, shift it elsewhere, to some abandoned dark flap of the house, and wreck the ceiling. Stack clothes to the second floor, or better.

He imagines sunlight above Hoseok’s brow, golden flecks, head in the clouds, silky rolls wheeling off his touch, heavenly.

At night, the moon hangs round and full, bursting through windowsills, polishing every surface spotless, clumping on his lashes dew-like. The wisp of an oil lamp dyes silver, flickers, dying. Taehyung blows it out, and night stills, briefly. And it’s between silver-washed rocks and resting flat stars where shapes bend into shoulders, pencil-tip chin. Broad and humped, a profile bent with silver teeth, charming. On certain days, he speaks to it, the shadow. On certain days, the shadow reins in its teeth and strings muted words from its lips, ushering him to sleep. Under the open moonlight, salt-white and undefeated, it cannot speak.

On certain _lonely_ days, Jimin swamped with overtime and not even _there_ when Taehyung talks, not mentally present; the house drowned in magnified quiet, every heartbeat a storm, every footstep a fallen oak. Loud enough to mask the intrusion of otherworldly things, of shadows with creaking weight. Of animated grins and dropped pretence.

Snow knocks at his window. Taehyung snuggles into his pillow, closes his eyes.

He sees a tree.

Beautiful things float here, ripened snow and crusty breeze and hammering rays, breaking through to soil. Veins in the ground thicken with severe edges, clambering from deep underneath, cords twisting and intertwining into a swaying bald tree, lonely in a square field of desolation.

Winds whispering fervent gossip bat at Taehyung’s hair. The tree rustles back, conversing casually.

“Nice thinking, huh?”

Busy petals lulling. Disturbed water like plucking strings. Moths smell of bluebells and Taehyung feels them, fluttering on his fingers, flailing, and thinks of searing nothingness and cat-like smiles dragging boundaries back into place. Milky ways between dimensions. Thinks of it with his eyes shut, firm.

“Come here. Come to this place,” the voice beckons, dispersing lightly like branches, like a ballad opening. “It’s special, Taehyung-ah. They can’t stop us here. Remember what I told you, about the end of the world? How the sun goes first and the stars start anew? Remember, at the dock?”

Wings bat lightly, ground dusted with leaves and petals, and Taehyung imagines a pair of feet there, where flowers part above the ground.

“It’s like that. _Dying_ . Settling every ray and leaving it with the world. Rising like a star someplace higher, someplace new.” A sudden full, restful sigh. And then almost shaking with anticipation: “Talk to me, Taehyung-ah. You can. We’ll have lots of time, once you’re here. Trust me.”

Taehyung gapes, subtly, helplessly. Reaching past missing years and finding Hoseok: bursting with warmth, even at the guardrails of space-time realities still animatedly pacific, dependable like a pillow. There's a moth in his chest, quivering, floundering.

Taehyung believes him. Believes this moment can end, and another will start again. Believes it enough to say, mouth dry, “Beautiful dream. So beautiful.”

A beat of silence. As if taking in the words, the familiar voice, sinking like stone in water. “Reminded me of the beach. I go there all the time, still. Can’t seem to let go.”

“You never left?”

“No.” The air is cherry-sweet, dripping. “Guess that’s how it works, right? The afterlife. You go where your heart lingers. No body to hold you down.”

“Strange,” Taehyung smiles, moths tickling his neck. “I always thought you stick to the last place you’d been. Haunt it. Scare fishermen with blood-red thunder.”

“Guess not.”

A dark cloud looms ahead, blanketing trees and parched ground. Buffeting winds heighten, tides rise. Gulping water gently quells, whirling in the distance. A lake.

“I won’t take long,” Taehyung says. “Wait for me.”

A glint of a smile, broken like glass. “Always.”

The ground pulls away from Taehyung, the tree diminishing to the lit end of a funnel.

Dripping water. Seeping through his clothes, wet and heavy. He’s flat against a watery surface, a turning lily pad in a wide lake.

Smell of honey and dried flowers, with a breath, escape him.

He sinks.

Lights dance on his arms, greenish and slow, curbing even time. He gazes longingly to the tree. Rubbery roots and cottony wild twigs, a rain-dotted sun, all faraway specks skimming a distant surface. He blurts a bubble. Gravity tugs, further and further bottom. 

Pivots into a painful waking. 

When his eyes shoot open, conscious, his fingers claw into the air, gasping. Each time stings harder than the last, as if he’s escaped the palm of death. Eager to catch him in a net, pin him to a board.

A horn blows. Chains of smoke fly past him, ploughed tracks and grinding wheels beating into each other, paddling into wood. Tiles under Taehyung’s feet rock left and right, tipping seesaws. Faint music plays, scratchy radio-channels and upbeat deejays, burnt pastry thick in the air, enticing, running through corroded iron butter-sweet. Bolts and metal all around him. He leans into a transparent peephole, train tracks flashing underneath.

He’s been here before. Playing piano tiles with the floor. Watching behind glass, the world zip past on a slippery flat surface, leather seats maroon and botched from passenger after passenger. Stepping carefully, he opens a door into a long, narrow hall of vases and tables, swiping plates of omelettes and munching mouths, blob-faced waiters growling underneath bubbling handkerchiefs. A football game screeches through square televisions, and a couple of stubble-chin customers tip back their glasses and stamp them on soaked tissues, mouthing drunkenly. Someone tosses him a menu. He skims over the breakfast specials and grilled meat courses roughly, dwelling on the drinks, before handing it back. Voices fly left and right, meat slaps a sizzling pan. Behind a counter, mixing drinks, a barista’s stare is incisive, a firm hold. Taehyung sits on one of the spinning chairs tucked under the protruding table, unsure but weary.

“How’d you come in?” The barista slides to behind a metallic hanger of all their lamented specials and shuts it in a drawer, stuffing a thick cloth into a cup. He’s facing Taehyung, obsidian eyes large.

“Do you have Coke?” Taehyung asks, intently. “Or water, if it’s free. My throat is burning.”

“But,” he frowns, confusion bulging between his eyebrows. Lit bulbs overhead accentuate a taut grimace tugging at the barista’s lips.

A sales journal sits by the cashier, and Taehyung’s eyes glaze over the score messily scrawled with ink. “Is there any chance you could put a tab on my name? I don’t think I brought cash,” he says simply.

The barista stares at him, stricken. “Customer policy. No credit payment.”

“Might as well. I’ll be getting off soon,” Taehyung tells him, sighing thoughtfully. “Can’t promise I’ll be back any longer next time, or with money.”

A frantic nod. “Next time, then.”

Taehyung’s smile is bright. “Nice place. Any chance they’re hiring? I can make do with free drinks for hourly wage.”

Almost concernedly the barista cuts him short, adds: “Best if you don’t consume anything. Not unless you’re staying for good.”

The barista tends to the drinks counter. Taehyung turns circles uncertainly in his seat, sulking.

He ventures through another door into the passenger deck. Spilled luggage, baked brown briefcases and tinkling handbags peer from above bronze railings, and below, leather chairs stuffed with people. Most of them fast asleep, peaceful, some staring idly out the window, watching as Taehyung had, as Jimin’s house sprouted into view and wilted far behind, as his old high school flew past, windows smashed and names scarred over poles and doors, as everything he knew withered to dust far behind, out of view.

Lucky thing he got off.

It was Jimin who helped, that time.

 _You promised goodbyes first_ , he remembers hearing. _Taehyung, come on._ And the train slowed to a stop, and Taehyung got off, deep bottomless snow sucking in his knees. Listened to beating tracks and a disappearing train, listened to snow unravelling like a map to the dusty drive-in to Jimin’s house. Gentle, melodic. _I don’t want to be alone_ , and Taehyung found himself in the crumpled sheets of his bed, stark afternoon brewing hot on his neck, Jimin curled into his arm, head over Taehyung’s beating chest.

He thinks, it’s what he is. Half there, half not. Alive, and dying. Awake and breathing warm, palpable daylight, flown across other worlds in slumber. He wonders briefly what Jimin had heard, ear to his heart. Silence? Or something dim, something slow and far apart like he’s travelling up and down between wavelengths?

Floating, even in sleep.

Jungkook is hunched in the front seats. Cheeks gaunt, a raw-egg sheen in his reflection.

Taehyung kicks someone’s bag over, picking his pace. “Excuse me,” he murmurs, shuffling through. Barricading passengers suddenly building a wall against him. “Please, I need to speak to him.”

Taehyung’s not supposed to be here, he knows. Him and Jungkook, he believes. But Jungkook sits there, shadows licking at the dip of his cheekbones and jaw, parasitic, defeat plain in his eyes, and Taehyung’s being pushed back, past feet-gobbling tiles bridging _back_. A tile flips, he plummets one foot in, screeching wheels and beating metal surging jarringly. Stones leap into his socks, jab at his left foot, steam and speeding tracks sweltering and alarmingly _real_ , and for once, he looks. Looks at those things, dressed in day-to-day businessmen suits, in smothered housewife kitchen aprons, in casual get-ups blending right into crowds. 

Harrowing, how _human_ they look.

The peephole shines onto his fingers. A multi-faceted diamond, clasped in iron, reaching for him, telling him _you have to leave_ , as it bends at surfaces, on his skin and out windows. He imagines it in Hoseok’s voice, genuinely pleading, _you have to go back_. But through the caving iron and the leading passage of kitchens and leathery chairs, Jungkook is there. He’s there, staring out the window, beaten and far from the world. Taehyung wonders, what he sees, beyond the train, out that window on that flat, crushing landscape. Wonders if he’s seen Taehyung, or Jimin, or anyone. Wonders if he’d seen them and leaned back unbothered, leather sticking to his cheek.

***

Taehyung makes himself breakfast.

Doors tremble in their frames. Heaps of a garden and low-bar fences powdered under fleecy pillows, dents left behind by Jimin’s Honda long washed over. Taehyung climbs into a window, holding out sunflower seeds to a chittering bird. A burst egg Benedict and black-crusted sandwiches on the side, he curls into the couch, feet contently pocketed in the flaps of fat pillows. 

He flicks past the bleak historical channels and blood spraying, car racing, intense staring action. It’s all Fast and Furious meets Game of Thrones mutilated offspring, or some Hollywood anime remake that’s wrecked through bases of the box office. A cartoon comes on.

Taehyung lowers his leg, curiously skimming a spot between the feet of a stool. A sore bump swells through the floor, large and solid. A seaweed green puppet appears on the screen, cotton jaw slacking, squeaks from its straw-thin windpipe.

Basement is downstairs. He hasn’t been there in a while.

He flips the switch, illuminating the basement in an eerie glow. The bulb suspended by a string stuck and slanted, a mountain’s shadow blinding half the basement to the door in stuffy obscurity. He returns with a ladder, unhooking the lights from a pair of jeans and chained cap. Must be Jimin’s doing, he thinks. He heaves a few layers, a couple of bright-striped sweaters and bomber jackets and an acorn pouch, leaving behind a bald patch and bruised ceiling as he carefully steps down. In a book somewhere upstairs, there was something about the importance of mass donations to the needy, bookmarked with folded paper. Could be what this is about.

Bits of ice fallen to the ground seep between cement cracks, pouring in like breathing beach waves. Cartoons ended, violent movies tuning in, he turns to his book instead. A tacky leather book, _KTH_ in golden thread pierced to the front.

 _Snow again_ , it says. _New Year lanterns still out on the swing._

Weird, he thinks. The handwriting, the heavy press of ink, the rough illustration of lanterns popping out like a sticker, suspended from their cloud patterned roof with comical swinging effects. 

Outside, dangerous tips of icicles peek through ajar windows.

 _December already?_ Taehyung said this morning, groggily. Soft weight of snow rattled at his window and slow-danced through the air, brushing, embracing, as if manifested from a dream.

 _No_ , Jimin answered. _Still mid-March._

Taehyung pushed open a window. The air crisp and bruising. _But it’s snowing._

 _Yeah, bit of an unnatural winter_ , Jimin replied, miserly. When Taehyung turned, he hastily drew a smile, waving mitten hands. _A thing came up. Nothing big. I’ll try to be home early with dinner, and then we’ll talk, yeah?_. Something about the way he said it, promising, pulled at something raw in his chest.

Tugged at something.

Taehyung trudges into Jimin’s room and sweeps the floor. Rolls carpets and returns books from a nightstand to shelves, mumbling short verses to children songs from that puppet show. He makes simple flower cut-outs labelled in letters and stacks Jimin’s books alphabetically, before putting it all aside and making undercooked congratulatory ramen. 

There’s a photo across the kitchen sink he’s eyeing: Namjoon, smiling broad and glassy. Yoongi all smug for extricating Namjoon from his doors-locked dilemma which had first triggered from a fake-deep lecture at the school assembly. Hoseok, Seokjin and Taehyung packed for the night, backs heavy, Hoseok sweaty and fresh from after-school dance classes, Seokjin sapped from swooping in new records to gaming championship charts. Jungkook had been empty-handed, rushed out his back-door after an argument with his parents about his next step after school. He didn’t want to consider it, didn’t like to set the future in stone with weightless words, half-hearted promises. Jimin, hand wrapped around Jungkook, forming a protective barrier, promising support nevertheless. All of them lumped into one big ball of yarn.

All of it, so vivid, so fresh.

Though apparently not.

Pre-schoolers on their second lunch break come to his gates, eagle-haired and thick-boned. The kindergarten two streets away has a trail of cardboard cut-outs of children pointing to the entrance and teachers who thought Suicide Squad would be an encouraging mural theme for five-year-olds. Snow is too high for cars, too deep for ploughing. They pull running poses and fall sideways into the snow, body outlines enacting homicidal crime scenes. Taehyung hands them masking tape and black and yellow markers. The neighbourhood is dissected by a long _DO NOT CROSS_ strip and adults throwing over their bags, fumbling, too tall to duck or jump.

He considers calling someone. He takes a look at his call log, missed calls listed under each five contacts; Hoseok, fewest. Decides against it.

He flips through the calendar, for a while. Through months and years.

The world tilts towards greyness, blanches to the metal plates of tall, sky-cutting buildings. Bright fuzzy billboards and street-lamps buzz on. The world turns, slowly, away from warmth. Taehyung purses his lips, gathering full-blast at a loose strand of hair poking his nose, toes tucked into the couch. Opens a blank page on his notebook. Stares at it, at the marks of his frustration torn through. Draws a circle into the couch with his finger, a looping circle, eyes to a dual-toned ceiling missing scraps of paint. He’ll save those to do tomorrow. He flattens his palm into the circle, tries to fit every finger like water into a bowl.

The world turns, slow, easing gently into sleep.

Photos are slotted in between pages. No doubt taken by him. Pigeons along an electrical cable. Children in a circle. Trees, rivers, sidewalks, bulked in snow.

What had he been feeling then, under that sky, that sunlight, breaking through clouds? What was he feeling, holding that camera, walking that road? Drawers tight, history splayed behind him charcoal-rich?

Afraid of loss, afraid of hollowness?

Taehyung fetches triangular kimbap and microwaves it in the kitchen, light on his feet, weight beyond gravity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have mock exams in two weeks and the real thing in four months but my Word document keeps on calling ;-;
> 
> Leave a comment or kudos! Lemme know what ya'll think


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